Chapter 12: "It's you."

There was a chill in the air as a Hydrena, a four-foot tall bird that looked like a cross between a condor and a pterodactyl, greeted the morning suns with an elk like call. It nested near the top of the trees in the orchard and called out each morning before it flew out to hunt its breakfast.

Like responding to a rooster's morning crow, Roy awoke and stowed his gear in the corner of the barn, like he had done every morning for the past week.  He assumed the day would be like the others that preceded it, so he put on the picking apron and grabbing a ladder he headed out to the orchard.  Yet no one was there.

"Where the heck is everyone?" he said to himself. Nothing looked disturbed or out of place. Everything seemed normal, just no one around. "This is damn odd," he said as he put the ladder down and started to look around the other side of the barn. He was becoming more concerned until he heard conversations coming from the house. Roy stopped and waited by the barn for something to happen that would clue him in on the situation. Soon everyone came out wearing clothes that looked cleaner and newer than what they normally wore. They all congregated by the road except for Mara, who crossed the field towards Roy with a small basket. When she reached him, she handed him the basket and said "Naoha madainn, Mi duil sibh ti simplidh lon." From the body language, he deduced that she was bringing him his breakfast, but they were off to somewhere without him.

The expression on her face seemed to have some conflict mixed in with her smile. She made another statement to him, but he was completely clueless to what it was. What she tried to tell him was that they were off to Church, they would be back by mid-day and to enjoy a restful day. Roy smiled and nodded to show understanding. Mara smiled back and padded him on the cheek. She had wanted to invite him to come with them, but Zohn didn't want to introduce Roy to the people in the village until he knew more about him.  Plus they didn't have any proper clothes to give him to attend church, so they agreed that it would be best for him to stay behind.

During the week Roy had picked up enough of their language to understand most of what she told him, but he was not well versed enough to respond back with more than a few phrases. He smiled and said, "ay bhui' le," which he believed to mean "Thank you" in their language as he accepted the basket of food. Then she crossed back to her family, who then walked down the path towards the village and into the morning fog. Roy sat down at the table in the field and removed the cloth covering the food in the basket. There was a loaf of bread, a couple of hard-boiled eggs, some dried meat, fruit and a slice of pie. He had gotten used to the bread and the meat, but the eggs were something else. They had a green shell and were brown on the inside with a bluish green double yoke. He had been forcing himself to eat them because it was clear that these people didn't waste any food and they were probably a good source of nutrition, but the taste was not something he was getting used to anytime soon. They were as bitter as grapefruit with a rubbery consistency and the yokes were like over salted tomatoes. Since there was no one around on that particular morning, he threw the eggs into the feeding trough, knowing the animals would be more than happy to eat up. In the bottom of the basket, there was a small book. When he opened it up, it seemed familiar. As he scanned the words, he seemed to know some of them. The actual letters were extremely different than the English alphabet, yet some were identifiable, almost as if he had always known them. As he thumbed through the book, he came to a picture of three small birds, like in the dream he had, in which woman read to him a story of the three children who were changed into birds by a wizard to find their mother. He turned to the front of the book and carefully scanned each word. At first, he could only identify a few words, but as he concentrated on them and focused on trying to remember the story, more and more words became clear to him.

The morning had warmed up nicely as the suns came up over the hillside. Deciding shade would be preferable; Roy found a comfortable spot under some trees to keep reading. In just those first few hours he was reading entire pages and understanding each and every word. He even sounded them out. Soon he was reading entire passages out loud as if he had always spoken the language. The oddness of it was not lost on him. All week he had been trying to learn enough of their language to attempt the most basic communication, and suddenly he was reading their language fluently. It didn't make any sense, and he didn't care for things that didn't add up, even when they were in his favor.

"What am I missing?" he asked himself. He suddenly felt very alone. There had never been a time in his life when he wasn't surrounded by people when he wanted to be. It was true he had sequestered himself away from people for the better part of a year after his wife died, but that was different. At that time he wanted to be alone because his pain dragged him into a pit of anguish. He had long since overcome that, at least enough to live his life again. Normal for him had become a ship full of people and technology to provide for any whim. But now suddenly he found himself on an alien world with no technology to help him and no one to talk to. Then he had a realization. He wasn't lonely, and he was scared. For the first time, he had no control over his destiny. He could be trapped there for the rest of his life. A lifetime of training, education, hopes, dreams, and sacrifice for what? To live out the rest of his days as a fruit picker?

"Stop thinking like that O'Hara!" he said to himself.  "There is always a solution to any problem.  You just haven't found it yet."

From a distance, there was a noise that sounded like weeping. At first, it seemed to be coming from all around him. Standing he looked side to side and then turned, and then turned again. It seemed more distant, yet he could tell the direction the sound was coming from, but could not see who it was. As he started to walk down the orchard, he became somewhat disoriented. He had spent every day of the past week in it, but yet it was different somehow, and he was feeling a bit lost. It was almost as if something had rearranged the landscape just enough so that certain things like an odd colored rock or a misshapen tree that he would use as landmarks would still be there, only in a place different then he remembered. He continued to follow the sound of weeping until he saw a woman's leg and the soft blue of a dress from the other side of one of the larger trees. As he walked around it, he found Katreena sitting under a tree crying. "It's you," he said.

Katreena looked up just as surprised to see him as he was to see her.  She jumped up and ran away from him as fast as she could.

"Wait! Please!" he called out as he ran after her as she disappeared around another tree. He followed, but when he rounded the tree, he found himself at a lake, the same lake that he had crashed. In the middle of the lake he could see a small boat with three different kinds of birds on it; birds like the ones described in the story.

A sudden brisk wind rustled the trees and gave him a chill waking him up.  It took a few moments for him to realize he had fallen asleep under the trees.  The entire experience from reading the book to seeing Katreena had been nothing more than a dream.  Looking back at the book the words and letters appeared alien to him again, except he could make out a few words.  It was kind of like remembering something you learned a long time ago, such as when you don't remember the entire lesson, but you know bits and pieces of it. Thumbing through the pages, he tried again to make sense of any of the words in the book attempting to learn something about the language.